p.3 For a finite-size flow system to persist in time (to live), its configuration must evolve in such a
way that provides easier access to the currents that flow through it.
p.6 Life is movement and the constant morphing of the design of this movement. To be alive is to
keep on flowing and morphing. When a system stops flowing and morphing, it is dead. Thus, river basins configure
and reconfigure themselves to persist in time.
p.9 Design does not emerge willy-nilly. To know why things look the way they do, first recognize what
flows through them and then think of what shape and structure should emerge to facilitate that flow.
p.14 The constructal law is a shout from the rooftops: Everything that flows and moves generated
designs that evolve to survive (to live).
p.14 We use the constructal law to predict what should occur in nature - that designs should emerge
and evolve in time to facilitate flow access.
p.20 The constructal law does much more than explain the designs we see in nature. It articulates a law
we can use to understand why designs emerge and predict how they will evolve in the future.
p.32 The constructal law... Its power and correctness rest on this fact: It enables us not just to describe
but to predict the evolution of all flow systems... we can use the constructal law to imagine what [a natural system] should
look like it it has the freedom to change over time to flow more easily.
p.36 What the constructal law captures is a central tendency in nature... It is because this tendency has
a direction, a purpose, that we can predict how things should evolve in the future.
Using the constructal law we can recast organic evolution as a dynamic process that generates better
designs... the central tendency is the selection of characteristics that... allow animals and plants to generate more flow
(movement) for their mass with less expenditure of useful energy to achieve this movement... The same tendency governs the
evolution of inanimate systems; of all the possible configurations, the ones that persist are those that facilitate
flow.
p.44 A prerequisite, then, is for the flow system to be free to morph. The emerging flow architecture is
the means by which the flow system achieves its objective under constraints. Freedom is good for design.
p.56 But nature does not exist in freeze-frame; it is dynamic, ever evolving.
p.75 By refocusing our attention on how things look - on their evolving designs that are the morphing boundaries
of their flow systems - the constructal law reveals, predicts, and explains design in nature.
p.102 It teaches us (1) that everything evolves, not just biological creatures, (2) that there is a predictable
direction to these changes, and (3) that we can witness many entities morphing - becoming better and better - right before
our eyes.
p.153 But the changes that stick are those that allow the flow system to persist in time.
p.234 The better and more easily we guide and power movement, the more our movement (our culture)
persists. Every living thing possesses this ability, to use the environment as fuel
p.236 Freedom is good for design... freedom is a prerequisite for the ability to change, to move
more easily. It is, by the way, captured in Darwin's hunch that the survivor is the one who adapts.
p.237 anything that flows - which is just about everything - is "alive" because it evolves as it flows.
Life is the persistent movement, struggle, contortion, and mechanism by which animate and inanimate flow systems
morph to generate better access for what flows.